


Of The Naming of Things

by tunteeton



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Baby Names, Gen, Growing Up, Kidlock, Mycroft To The Rescue, William Scott Holmes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-24
Updated: 2014-02-24
Packaged: 2018-01-13 15:32:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1231717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tunteeton/pseuds/tunteeton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"William Sherlock Scott Holmes, that's the whole of it."<br/>OR<br/>How Sherlock got his name.<br/>OR<br/>There was a moment in time when an angry small boy hugged an Irish Setter by the river bank. It was not a very significant moment, but something great grew out of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of The Naming of Things

”Eat your salad Billy,” Mummy says in the yellow kitchen when he's four years old. The kitchen is yellow because Mycroft's science experiment exploded quite spectacularly and he's still moping in his room. Mycroft doesn't take failure well, Mummy doesn't mind slightly sticky surfaces and Billy is an idiot, so it's probably Dad who will, eventually, wrestle it back to a relative shape and shine.

“Eat your salad,” Mummy repeats as Billy peeks distrustfully at the blue plastic plate. He identifies carrot, lettuce and cucumber, and those suspiciously cheery bits are either mango or runaway parts of Mycroft's botched concoction. Sulphur, maybe. He's seen the pictures in his brother's books and knows that the stuff is yellow. If he could read, he'd find out how it behaves when mixed with salad. Now he can only guess, and observe. (Mycroft is always going on about observation.) So far nothing has caught fire or started boiling. Too bad. Maybe it's just mango.

Billy hates mango.

“Mike could read when he was four,” he complains and starts to systemically separate the mango/sulphur from the other ingredients. Billy only recognises some letters, the ones Mycroft has taught him. _E, t, a, o, n, s, i_ and _h_ , chosen because they are the most common ones. You can't spell sulphur with those, that much even Billy understands. Mummy smiles and ruffles his head.

“Oh darling, don't worry about it,” she tries to comfort him, “you draw the prettiest pictures. And eat your mango, Billy, it's good for you. Lots of vitamins, so that you'll grow up to be a tall, healthy boy.”

That's the moment his rebellion starts.

Billy doesn't want to draw pretty pictures, or to become a tall, healthy boy. He doesn't want to be the family idiot, the only one with a plastic plate. He wants to be smart like Mycroft, like Mummy is. He's tired of a world filled with unknowns, whether they are chemical elements or vegetables, of always having to ask his brother. He's tired of Billy. If Billy is going to be like this, he needs to be something else altogether.

When Mummy and Dad discuss Mycroft's future, they speak of great and meaningful things, like universities and careers in politics. When they discuss his, it's to do with whether he has grown, or should they force more salad into him. Billy is bland and uninteresting to a repelling degree. Billy must go.

“My name is not Billy,” he screams and escapes the yellow kitchen with the hateful salad, the crowded living room filled with books he can't read, out of the front door and through the garden overflowing with plants he doesn't recognise. He runs until he arrives at the brook where the majestic pirate ship Fury still floats, albeit upside down, in the shallow water. The brook he knows. It's home to the toads and the tadpoles, the mosquito larvae and pupae, and even the occasional _Anguilla_ eel. He slides down to the bank, drops to his knees and pushes his face under the surface, fighting to keep his eyes open.

The cold shock of the water, the dimmed humming of the brownish stream, serve to ease his mind. He stays as long as he can, watches the algae sway with the currents, hopes for a glimpse of a silvery fin. When he finally has to come up for air, dripping wet over his shirt and coughing, Redbeard is sitting there, next to him, watching with milky eyes. Redbeard is warm, and he's cold, and so he cuddles close to the greying ruby fur and holds the dog tightly.

He has two big brothers, and this one is his favourite. There are no comparisons, ever, between the two of them.

“My name is not Billy,” he mumbles against the silky throat, grips the white muzzle. Redbeard watches, as patient as ever, solider than anything else he knows. He starts with his face, naming as he goes, muzzle, jaws, teeth, eyes, ears, start of spine. The familiar words soothe in their repetition, the warm body still and reliable under his fingers.

“William.”

He freezes.

“Go away, Mycroft.”

But of course Mycroft never does as he's told. He comes down to sit on the other side of the dog, looks at him running his hands over him, waiting until he arrives at the tip of his tail.

“Did you know,” he says gravely, “that dogs don't have collar bones?” And he takes his hands and puts them back to Redbeard's front, which is soft, yielding. Next he guides his hand to his own chest, helps him find the clear bulge there.

It's fascinating, new information, and for a moment he forgets to be angry. So of course Mycroft has to spoil it for him.

“You upset Mummy.”

“I don't want to be baby anymore,” he blurts out and hates the whine in his voice. It's difficult, being believable when you are four years old and currently trying very hard not to cry on your dog.

“Now, William,” Mycroft begins with his 'reasonable big brother' -accent, and he knows, _knows_ , that he's being misunderstood.

“Not that either,” he interrupts angrily. It's that or wailing, and only Billy would wail. He can do better than that.

“...Scott?” Mycroft tries, and he hopes, he really hopes it would feel right, but it doesn't.

If his lower lip trembles, Mycroft doesn't say a word.

He has two big brothers, and they both are kind of okay.

“I don't want to be an idiot,” he confesses in a moment of vulnerability. “I want to be smart like you.”

Mycroft just looks at him sadly.

“If you say again that knowing things just means that you know there are so many other things you don't know I'm going to punch you,” he threatens and hugs Redbeard tighter. The dog gives a soft sigh and stays patiently put.

“I have an idea,” his brother finally says after a long silence of contemplation. “But I need some time for research. Come to my room before going to bed.”

–

He spends that day nameless, having scorned both of his own. Deep down he knows it's not about the name, that what he's called doesn't carry over to what he does, but resenting Billy is so much easier than resenting himself. When the sun finally sets, he's restless and agitated, pockets filled with ginger biscuits stolen from Mummy's tins. Mycroft may be better in virtually everything, but he still has nimbler fingers, and lighter feet. Dad will accept the blame for the theft if it's noticed, he always does.

“Where's Mike?” He asks, peeking from the abandoned kitchen, slightly less yellow than it was in the morning. There's a rag in the sink and some water pooling on the old floor – it had been Mummy who cleaned after all. Dad would have been more careful.

Mycroft is nowhere to be found, but Dad is reading the paper in the living room, his feet comfortably stretched towards the fire and a cup of coffee steaming by his elbow. His eyes have a mischievous glint in them as he gestures at the stairs. In his room, then. Mycroft has appropriated the bigger of the two attic rooms to his own use. In theory, the other room is his, but in practise he only uses it to store interesting things. Redbeard isn't allowed upstairs, and so he has made a nest on the sofa and sleeps there with the dog, curled around its warm back. It's only when they have visitors that he's forced upstairs, and those nights are always sleepless and cold. Also, Mycroft snores.

He hesitates a moment in the doorway, but when Dad winks at him he smiles back and tosses him a biscuit. It's good to have allies in the house.

There are twenty-six stairs in total, and it's an old house. The stairs have a character of their own, some creaking when stepped on, some giving a little. He knows exactly how to climb them without making a sound, where to skip one and where to walk close to the wall. It's something of a game, creeping up those stairs with his eyes closed and arriving at Mycroft's door unannounced. The fact that it annoys his brother is a welcome bonus. Too bad that Mycroft's door creaks too, otherwise he'd love to scare his brother by materialising on his bed out of the blue.

This time, they have a pact. This time, he knocks.

When Mummy last visited his room, she ended up naming it 'The Nightmare Dump'. Mycroft's lair isn't clean either, but his mess is more academic in nature. Maps, dictionaries, magazines and non-fiction books fill every surface, form towers on the table and overflow from the dresser. There are miniatures dangling from the ceiling and electronic kits littering the rag rug. The only place kept relatively free is the bed. At the moment, it holds Mycroft and a stack of folders with old, yellowish paper.

“Those aren't yours,” he points out as soon as the door is closed. He adores this room, tiptoes in often when Mycroft is out to sit in the middle of the treasures for hours on end. He knows every book, even every notebook here. The new stuff is immediately interesting.

“It's a journal about the family history,” Mycroft explains and juts a hand to his direction. Soon enough they are both chewing the ginger biscuits as Mycroft explains the research he has done, moving through the generations of the Holmes family with a flourish of old papers.

“You said that you wanted to be smart,” he says and points a finger at a name after a name, reading them aloud and telling what he has found out about the people behind them. “So I thought, you need a role model, somebody very smart indeed. And guess what I found.” Here he stops, taps at the paper.

There's a name written there, a long name. He squints at the yellow page, forces himself to understand. Many of the letters are familiar to him, and he spells them out as he goes.

“ _S – h – e -_ ,” he starts, but then there's a letter he doesn't recognise. “She, Mycroft? Is it a girl's name?”

His brother snorts. “No, this man was a renowned chemist, an artist and a philosopher. A real Renaissance man. Try it again. The next letter is an _r_.”

It takes a moment, but he manages the feat with a little extra help from Mycroft. It's an unusual name, not unlike Mycroft's own, and he loves it. It's perfect.

“Well, do you like it?” His brother asks, and he nods enthusiastically.

“Do you want it?”

“I could have it?” He breathes out in wonder.

“I think it could be managed. But you know that you have to work for the rest. And no upsetting Mummy any more,” Mycroft smiles, and Sherlock is so happy he actually hugs him.

“I will, and I won't,” he swears, a hand over his heart, and they set to work right away. It's high time he masters this reading business anyway.

A world of knowledge waits, all secure here in Mycroft's cosy bedroom.


End file.
